Sensitive Areas of Language: Taboos and Euphemization of the Concept of “Woman” in English, Russian and Kazakh Linguistic Cultures

Abstract

The article explores the linguistic mechanisms of tabooing and euphemization associated with the concept of “woman” in Kazakh, Russian, and English. The relevance of this topic lies in the fact that gender-marked vocabulary intersects with cultural prohibitions, etiquette norms, and cognitive schemas that influence the choice of speech strategies. Thus, studying the ways in which women’s physiological, age-related, and social realities are named and replaced, allows us to clarify the interaction between language, culture and thought. The purpose of the study is to identify the semantic, cognitive and pragmatic parameters of euphemistic and tabooed units in a comparative aspect. The work includes the following areas: analysis of lexico-semantic models of euphemization, reconstruction of frames and cultural scenarios, comparison of literary and corpus material, identification of universal and specific strategies in three linguistic cultures. The novelty of the research is determined by the combination of cognitive-framework analysis with corpus and discourse methodologies, as well as a focus on women’s issues as a sensitive linguistic and cultural area. The material includes literary texts J. Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”, M. Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” (“Мастер и Маргарита” ), and A. Nurpeissov’s “Blood and Sweat” (“Қан мен тер”), corpus resources (BNC, COCA, NCRL, National Corpus of the Kazakh language). It has been established that English predominantly uses metaphorization and periphrases (for example,  expecting, those days  ), while Kazakh demonstrates socio-role and etiquette strategies (e.g.  аяғы ауыр, ұятты сөз  ). In both languages, euphemization is particularly active in the domains of physiology, age, and social roles. The results obtained confirm both the universality of the physiological content delineation and the cultural specificity of the methods of speech euphemization. The practical significance is related to the possibility of using data in intercultural communication, teaching foreign languages, lexicography, translation studies, and NLP tasks for processing sensitive vocabulary.